Nanofluid flooding for enhanced oil recovery in a heterogeneous two-dimensional anticline geometry

Abstract

In the present study, we try to numerically simulate the nanofluid flooding method, which is one of the newest methods in this field. For this purpose, the nanofluid is considered as a single phase fluid that enters the porous petroleum reservoir containing oil. Since all porous petroleum reservoirs are heterogeneous, the porous grid is also considered heterogeneous and is solved using the finite element numerical method. The geometry considered in this study is a two-dimensional anticline medium that is heterogeneous. In this study, the effect of using different volume fractions of nanoparticles in nanofluid is studied. Capillary pressure or diffusion are considered in simulation and their behavior in the solution domain is explored. To obtain the capillary pressure in the problem, the logarithmic method is used due to its faster convergence. Another important parameter to be considered is the amount of input fluid into the reservoir (debit), which three different values are considered. Also, the amount of saturated oil remaining in the reservoir, which is one of the inherent characteristics of the reservoir, has been investigated for four different values.